You may recall the trying circumstances behind attempting to book a room last year for the San Diego Comic Con. I wrote about that here. And this year, our group who go every year expected it, rightly, to be even worse. (Which at the same time was difficult to imagine.)

I’m out of town on business and just got back to my room and checked email and there’s the message I was expecting but dreading: for the first time, my group of compadres who go to the San Diego Comic Con every year failed to get us a room.

Here was the first message in the series, from good friend Paul (who last year succeeded in getting us one of these precious few con-rate rooms). Bear in mind, there are about 125,000 attendees at this convention, most of them needing a room — and I believe last year there were 9600 rooms initially allocated to this convention. That didn’t make the defeat sting any less for Paul, who entitled this message “Miserable Failure”:

I am sad to report that I failed to get a room reservation through the Comic-Con today. I was able to get to the point of confirmation and then the reservations system gave me an error message. When I retried to book the system froze for minutes on end. I did call the number listed for Travel Planners if there was a problem in reserving a room. The only thing they could do was put me on a wait list for the Sheraton Suites.

I tried my best but was thwarted by the computers at Travel Planners.

Miserably your,

Paul

I like the intentionality of “Miserably your, … Paul.” Because I don’t think that’s a typo: I think that in this case he is indeed, miserably our Paul. I can picture his shoulders slumping in defeat. Paul and fellow Con roommate Trey each volunteered for this mission, and I know that each wanted to end the story with himself as Galahad on a charger.

Here was Trey’s response posted to the seven of us:

I had no better luck on the phone. I gave up by 10:30. As long as we still have Sheraton Suites (right?), the higher room rate divided by the bunch of us is better than sleeping out in the cold or squeezing into a room at The M (though smoking cigars on the roof with Lee was pretty fun); I believe you have landed us the best available option, and for that I’m grateful. BTW: you sound like a supervillain on the order of Galactus on your speakerphone. With a slight Jersey accent.

From this speakerphone reference, I can only assume that these two were in constant communication as they tried to coordinate a room-reservation strategy, even as they saw that strategy go the way of, say, Rudy Giuliani’s recent strategy. By now, while I was still downstairs on my feet lecturing about something or other at this USC off-site function, heartfelt condolences were pouring in to Paul and Trey. As so many of us do sometimes, Larry wanted to blame the system:

Paul, amid the Super Tuesday hoohaw, I was wondering how you were faring. Ugh.
This can’t keep going like this–they have to retool the system somewhere.

Larry

Subtext:  It’s out of your hands, Paul. You did your best. And, it turns out, Paul had long ago initiated a backup plan:

I did reserve a room at the Sheraton Suites at the best available rate. It is higher than the Con rate, but it is better than any other option.

As for Trey’s option of sleeping out in the cold, I seem to remember San Diego was pretty damn hot the last two years.

Paul

Which elicited a cheer from Terence:

Great work, Paul!

And if one of us has to work the corner so we can afford the higher rate, so be it (I’m thinking Trey would make us the most cash. Lee a close second).

— Pimp-Daddy Terence

I don’t know why I would earn less than Trey, but this is an honor I’m willing to cede.

So:  We have a room, but it’s not a “Con” room at the convention rate. It’s not the fact of the extra expenditure that troubles me. I don’t need any more things in my life, but I’m always willing to spend on experience. This annual excursion of seven good friends is money well-spent. What stings is the sense of being excluded in this way from something I’ve been included in for 20 years. There are the special, lucky few who got a room at Con rate — and we weren’t among them. We don’t need the Con rate; we just want it. (And, as others noted, we’re lucky to have gotten a room at all.) At this moment, I’m relating to the sentiment one often hears from those who have championed their niche hobby, but who now feel that their peculiar area of pop subculture , one they inhabited long before almost anyone took notice, has, like the San Diego Comic Con, now started to feel too pop-ular.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.